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The KTVU story yesterday was entitled, “One dead, three injured in Newark burglary suspect crash.”

Oddly enough, the three “injured” parties, Rajwaun Watkins, Jabrie Watts and Deshon Collier, all 20, all have “extensive criminal histories.” That’s because they’re the burglary suspects, whose getaway car allegedly hit and killed a motorist while they were fleeing the police.

The murder victim was not named.

If you commit one or more crimes, during the commission of which someone dies, that makes you guilty of murder, too. That’s because one of your crimes was the cause of that person’s death.

For over a decade now, activists and even politically savvy police chiefs, such as then-LAPD chief William Bratton, have lobbied against police chasing suspects, arguing that vehicular pursuits of criminals endanger the public, causing otherwise preventable injuries and fatalities. (Bratton even lobbied against TV news outfits showing police chases, insisting of chases, “that’s not news,” and that airing them encouraged copycats. Leftwing journalism professors enthusiastically agreed with the lawman, likely because they wanted the public to see fewer faces of black and Hispanic criminals on TV. While some pc TV news directors publicly agreed with Bratton that chases had little journalistic value, they rejected his baseless claim that broadcasting police pursuits caused more of them, and the public was unswayed by any of his assertions.)

The giveaway as to what really was afoot was the activists’ concern about the danger posed by police, rather than criminals.

The Newark PD yielded to the pro-criminal lobby, but it still didn’t work.

When three black burglars fled police at speeds of almost 80 mph on Wednesday, the cops gave up, but that had no effect on the burglar-driver, who kept on speeding until he plowed into a car, killing the other driver. That made the burglars all murderers, as well.

I suppose police and pro-criminal activists will need to hold public training classes for active and aspiring criminals, teaching them to simply drive away from the police, without speeding, while police academies start teaching cadets, “If a suspect doesn’t stop when you say ‘Stop, Police!,’ just let him go.” Meanwhile, look for the criminal lobby to blame the police for making the Newark burglar-driver-killer nervous, and thereby causing the fatality. Maybe they’ll agitate for indicting a cop for the dead motorist.

In 2009, the black mayor of Wellford, S.C., Sallie Peake, ordered Wellford’s police to cease and desist from even chasing criminals by foot. (According to Mayor Peake, the police chief had already forbidden vehicular chases a few years earlier.) State law notwithstanding, Mayor Peake did not consider the possession of crack cocaine to be a crime. Though Mayor Peake claimed her policy was based on concerns over the cost of workmen’s compensation claims, due to injuries officers suffered during foot chases, she was apparently of the opinion that if a criminal chose not to surrender to police, and could make a run of it, that was his prerogative. After the Mayor became a national laughing-stock, she rescinded her rule. (Last month, former Mayor Peake was arrested and indicted for allegedly stealing some of the town funds she was so concerned with saving.)

As for the headline at the top of this story, the reference to “three injured” just confuses matters. They are all suspects, and thus, don’t count, since they only got hurt in the act of murdering someone else.

Speaking of which, Newark Commander Bob Douglas was quoted by KTVU as saying, “Who was driving is still under investigation, and obviously that is a very important part of this investigation.”

As a matter of law, who was driving is irrelevant. However, in the push to find ways to diminish punishment for black criminals, law enforcement and criminal justice authorities long ago (30 years ago?) began ignoring the concept of “acting in concert,” whereby all criminal actors are equally culpable for any crimes they committed together, and began punishing different criminal actors differently for the same crime.

Nicholas Stix
Nicholas Stix, Uncensored

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Biography - Nicholas Stix

Award-winning, New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix founded A Different Drummer magazine (1989-93). Stix has written for Die Suedwest Presse, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Middle American News, Toogood Reports, Insight, Chronicles, the American Enterprise, Campus Reports, VDARE, the Weekly Standard, Front Page Magazine, Ideas on Liberty, National Review Online and the Illinois Leader. His column also appears at Men's News Daily, MichNews, Intellectual Conservative, Enter Stage Right and OpinioNet. Stix has studied at colleges and universities on two continents, and earned a couple of sheepskins, but he asks that the reader not hold that against him. His day jobs have included washing pots, building Daimler-Benzes on the assembly-line, tackling shoplifters and teaching college, but his favorite job was changing his son's diapers.

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